The Non-Adventures Of...

Sunday, 21 December 2014

There’s a rash at this time of year
of people lamenting the terrible lie we tell to children. You know,
the one about the fat man who comes down your chimney on Christmas
Eve and leaves presents for good girls and boys. How can we keep
perpetuating this terrible fantasy? they ask. Wouldn’t it be better
to instruct our children in science than have them believe in some
kind of overgrown fairy?

Floodllama, Santa Claus is coming to town, on Flickr.
Not hugely relevant but an awesome picture.

I have to say that of all the lies
parents tell their children, this one is a long way from being the
worst. ‘Honest, it won’t hurt.’ ‘You’ll enjoy it when you
get there.’ ‘You look so beautiful.’ ‘Of course you’ll get
a boyfriend/girlfriend.’ ‘Wow, you did that so well.’ These are
the kind of lies that seem kind at the time but can leave you let
down, betrayed, feeling misunderstood.

Father Christmas is the best of lies,
and I’m not so sure that it really is a lie. (I’ll come to that.)
Father Christmas is a lie that lets you get so
excited on Christmas Eve that you can’t sleep. It’s a lie that
makes magic sparkle in children’s eyes. It’s a lie that allows
you to drop off at night and then wake up in the morning with that
curious weight on your feet, to open one eye and see something lumpy
and indistinct lying across the bottom of the bed, to sit up and open
presents without any preamble, any manners or holding back.

Bill McChesney 5176 Guess Whooo's coming to town, on Flickr.
This is not Father Christmas. This is a man in a suit.

As you
get older you think, ‘I’m sure I saw that in mum’s shopping,’
or ‘Isn’t it odd that Father Christmas shops in Tesco too?’ But
it’s not like the moment after you’ve had the immunisation and
realise, eyes wide with shock, that it did
hurt and mummy didn’t tell the truth. It’s not like the moment
when you objectively look at
the outfit you put together and realise you looked an idiot. It’s a
moment when you realise that for all these years your parents have
loved you enough to help you believe in something wonderful.

And
that’s where we come to the other thing, the fact that Father
Christmas isn’t a
lie. Father Christmas is
someone who loves you, who brings light and kindness into your life.
Father Christmas is the person you never see. Never mind men who
dress up in synthetic red suits and plastic beards and call
themselves ‘Santa’ and sit in grottos in garden centres and
shopping centres. They’re not Father Christmas. Everyone knows that
he comes when your eyes are closed, and that you must, must, never be
awake when he’s there. He’s invisible, incorporeal. He is a
manifestation of love.

I have
always remembered
how Laura Ingalls Wilder summed it up in On The Banks of Plum Creek.
I couldn’t do it better.

“Ma!” Laura cried. “There IS a
Santa Claus, isn’t there?”

“Of course there’s a Santa
Claus,” said Ma. She set the iron on the stove to heat again.

“The older you are, the more you
know about Santa Claus,” she said. “You are so big now, you know
he can’t be just one man, don’t you? You know he is everywhere on
Christmas Eve. He is in the Big Woods, and in Indian Territory, and
far away in York State, and here. He comes down all the chimneys at
the same time. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Ma,” said Mary and Laura.

“Well,” said Ma. “Then you
see–“

“I guess he is like angels,”
Mary said, slowly. And Laura could see that, just as well as Mary
could.

Then Ma told them something else
about Santa Claus. He was everywhere, and besides that, he was all
the time.

Whenever anyone was unselfish, that
was Santa Claus.

Christmas Eve was the one time when
everybody was unselfish. On that one night, Santa Claus was
everywhere, because everybody, all together, stopped being selfish
and wanted other people to be happy. And in the morning you saw what
that had done.

“If everybody wanted everybody
else to be happy, all the time, then would it be Christmas all the
time?” Laura asked, and Ma said, “Yes, Laura.”

Saturday, 20 September 2014

Today George
(almost 7) went to a friend’s birthday party. It was bowling, which
he was excited about, because he’d never been before. But of course
because he’d never been before it was also a troublesome thing for
him, in a typically aspie way. He behaved with perfect Georgeness,
but with gentleness and understanding we avoided a meltdown.

On coming in
through the door he was excited of course, but when his friend’s
mum said hello to him he instantly collapsed onto the floor and
rolled under the pool table and out the other side. In his cat-like
way he acted as if that was the perfectly proper way to get across
the room.

The first real
problem came with the bowling shoes. I tried to take it in a gentle
way, warning him he would have to change his shoes and taking him to
show him what the shoes would be like. We’ve had plenty of
experience with the trouble of shoe changes with him when taking him
to buy new shoes. It’s a change, and worse still, a change under
pressure. While all the other boys were excitedly taking their shoes
off and handing them over the counter, George was crouching in the
corner hiding his feet under his body. He didn’t want to do it, he
didn’t see the need for different shoes, he didn’t want shoes
with laces.

I noticed some of
the shoes had velcro straps, and luckily they had some in his size.
But this still meant getting his shoes off him. We managed this after
a little time, but he didn’t want to put the bowling shoes on. He
tried, but they felt wrong, and the two velcro straps were joined
together instead of separate. He kept asking me sporadically through
the party why the straps had to be joined together. Because I
explained to the lady behind the counter that he had Asperger’s she
was patient and although she shouldn’t let him in without shoes she
was flexible enough to let him go in carrying them.

The bowling
alleys were a difficult place too. It was noisy, bright,
overwhelming. The balls smashing into the floor, the sound of the
pins being knocked down and picked up again, talking and music and
excited children bouncing about like electrons in an atom. It was a
lot to take in. So he hid behind the seat back and then sat in a
corner for a while and someone else took his first turn. His friend’s
mum was patient and understanding and tried gently to bring him out
of his shell, explaining to her son when he asked why George was
hiding that he was just a bit shy.

Then he began to
engage. ‘Mummy, maybe when I’m not shy I can have a go,’ he
said. When he decided it was time to have a go, he did really well.
He engrossed himself in lining up the balls in order as they came out
of the machine, putting one on each side. (I was more bothered by the
odd blue ball than he was. All the rest were light orange or dark
orange and could be lined up nicely.) The holes went on top and
presented him with a shocked face.

After a few goes
he even decided that he wanted his shoes on. They stayed on for about
two minutes, and then suddenly it all became overwhelming again. He
didn’t like the taste of his drink. He lay under the bench. The
shoes came off. He was ‘bored’ of bowling and wanted to go now.
He had to walk away and watch through a glass screen for a while.
Then after his self-imposed break he slowly sidled back, and finished
the game.

Later he managed
the chaos of McDonald’s with grace, and as we walked back into town
he had fun trying to spot lines of three cars of the same colour in a
row, a game of his own devising.

I was proud of
him today. Together we managed things so that he didn’t find things
too overwhelming and he didn’t have a meltdown. He was eased gently
in and when he needed time he went off and took it. Instead of
breaking down and spoiling things for everyone, we got through and he
had a good time. What really gladdened me though was that everyone
around him was also patient and understanding. No one decided he was
rude or disruptive (or if they did they kept it to themselves.) They
accepted that he does things in his own way. That’s just the way
George is.

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

I have to say, I liked Rolf Harris’s portrait of the Queen. Was it great art? No, I don't think so. But it showed a side to her that is sometimes hard to see in official depictions. A friendly side, a humorous side. Watching the documentary that accompanied the painting I was struck by how Rolf drew her out, how he seemed to reach the human in her, the real elderly lady with a family and loves and hates and ordinary everyday troubles. No, it wasn't Michaelangelo or Picasso or Hockney, but it was a good painting.But of course, all that has changed. One wonders if the Queen was just another woman to be sexualised. One wonders at a man who could present such a friendly and kind persona to the world while using his position to abuse and traumatise the women and girls that he came into contact with. Apparently both the BBC and the Royal Collection disavow any knowledge of the painting’s whereabouts. It has been dropped like a hot potato. The last thing either great institution want is to be associated with a scandal of the magnitude of the Rolf Harris scandal.But if we put aside the horror of what Mr Harris was doing over all of these years, it leaves the question of how we view art in relation to the artist. What if Picasso were revealed to have been a serial rapist? What if Leonardo da Vinci were a paedophile? What if Frida Kahlo tortured animals? What if Constable beat his wife?

It seems to be established in various places that the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was a paedophile. I haven’t read any Ginsberg, but I would quite like to. But I feel awkward about this. Can I read and enjoy a man’s writing knowing that he has abused children in the most horrific way? Reading Lolita gave me a lot of conflicts (Should I enjoy the book? Should I attempt to understand the protagonist? Does it make it different now that I have my own children?), although it seems that Nabokov did not share the feelings of his protagonist in that novel. I know, as a writer, that it is quite possible to explore darker issues in writing without supporting the actions that you’re writing about. Often writing about them is an attempt to understand and process the fact that such things occur.It is, I think, a far easier moral undergoing to read or view art about disturbing subjects than it is to view art streets away from such things but with the knowledge that the artist was a damaged and, more crucially, a damaging human being.

What would we do if Leonardo da Vinci were a paedophile? Would we destroy his works and denounce the biographies? Would we attempt to explain and understand merely so that we could go on enjoying his work? I suspect the latter. In the case of a mediocre artist like Rolf Harris it’s easier to push his work under the carpet because it has so much less value to his audience.I’m still split on where we separate art and artist. I’m still convinced that a majority of people are willing to forgive sins if the time and distance from the artist and the value of the work is great. I’m still convinced that people are happier to denounce an artist’s work if the work never had that much value in the first place.But is a painting an artist? Is a book an author? It’s something to think about over your morning coffee. Rolf Harris presented us with a human, smiling Queen, perhaps his one, small but positive, contribution to art. Art is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and that’s what it meant to me, even if others may not share this view. Should we now throw that away?

Friday, 23 May 2014

It’s hard work
being George. It really is. Currently he’s not diagnosed with
anything and he’s waiting on assessment, so I won’t make any
assumptions here. But this is what it’s like being George. (I feel
the need to remind you again that these aren’t my children’s real
names.)

From Chaos to Order, by Sebastien Wiertz on Flickr. Kind of the wrong way round, but do you know how hard it is finding photos for things like this?

Life is endlessly
frustrating for him. People talk to him and make demands of him and
don’t know his reactions unless he verbalises them, which I feel
irritates him a lot. People annoy him by distracting him or breaking
into his routine. They ask him to do things he has no interest in,
like dressing himself or tidying up. If he’s asked to do homework
he usually collapses into a heap, or turns himself upside down, or
shouts or screams. He’s asked to go to school and mix with crowds
of people when really he’s best one or two on one. Apparently small
and insignificant things can throw him right off the rails. These
issues don’t bother him every time, but they do more often than
not.

Yesterday was a
doozy. George was playing with a toy car in the school playground.
When the time came to go home he realised he’d lost it. He wanted
me to look for it, but since Ben (three) had already walked out
through the gate with Oscar I needed to follow him. I told George he
could quickly have a run around to look for it himself, and catch me
up, but he wouldn’t. I understand the paralysing fear of doing
something like that, but I still had to catch up with Ben, who’s
too young to be out of the school playground without me.

This precipitated
a tantrum of epic proportions. Everything became a scream. He
screamed at me for calling the playground a playground. (He wouldn’t
tell me what it was called.) I told him I wasn’t arguing about
taxonomy because I had to go after Ben. A lot of hanging on to my arm
and collapsing onto the ground ensued. It’s hard to describe the
horror of trying to deal with this kind of thing when you’re Aspie
yourself and get completely overwhelmed by the chaos of someone
else’s meltdown. The screaming and shouting and screaming from a
six year old who is consumed with rage at not being able to control
his own circumstances. Trying to walk carrying multiple bags, coats,
and a guitar, with a tantruming child hanging off one hand and a
three year old trying to hold the other. The world condenses down to
a place where the only thing that exists is your child, screaming and
kicking and slapping and collapsing on the ground and shouting at you
and becoming enraged at anything he can get a hold of. ‘Stop
walking like that, mummy.’ ‘You’re making me do x, mummy.’
‘You’re making me bored, mummy.’ It is impossible to adequately
describe how enveloping and affecting this behaviour is. By the time
we had got across the field I was at the point of beating my head
into the conveniently place electrical substation. I needed to have
my own meltdown. Instead I managed to hold off until we were in the
house where I went into shutdown mode, where I could barely speak or
move for the next few hours.

These kind of
meltdowns don’t happen every day, but there is always something.
Here are a couple of examples of what it’s like to be George.

Sometimes he
wants a drink of water and I can’t find the water bottle that I
carry with me most of the time. He relies on drinking from this
bottle. He can’t go to the tap and get a drink in a cup because –
well, because it’s not what he does. He has to drink from my water
bottle. He either shouts or screams or collapses.

One day he was
given two slices of cucumber at dinner (one of them was very thick).
He almost always has three slices of cucumber. His response to
something like this is a burst of fury and outrage. I got out my
penknife and tentatively cut the thicker slice in two. Calm and
happiness was restored. He’s not being awkward or picky or over
dramatic. He is genuinely thrown off track by having the wrong amount
of slices, and things won’t be right until the normal routine is
restored.

Recently he’s
been wearing black school trousers every day. One morning his black
ones were dirty and I had to give him grey. His tantrum lasted
through getting dressed (which I had to do by holding him down and
forcing the clothes onto him) and through most of the walk to school.
He had to be carried at times (and he’s quite a solid 6 year old).
It wasn’t until I thought the time was right and I crouched down
and hugged him very tightly that he could grow calm.

Sometimes we ask
him stupid questions, like, ‘Do you want shoes or boots?’ ‘Do
you want to wear socks?’ ‘Do you want sauce with your dinner?’
Often the answer is a very indignant, high-pitched scream of ‘yes!’
or ‘no!’ depending on his preference. He’s not just being
stroppy. He’s genuinely indignant because I believe he expects us
to know.

If he can do
things as he wants to things go on pretty well. He needs to stand in
the right place to brush his teeth, use the right toothbrush, always
with the right toothpaste. I don’t argue with this, so things are
fine. But if I told him he couldn’t stand on the left side of the
sink leaning on the bath or if I suggest it’s late and he just go
to bed without worrying about his teeth, he would get very upset.

It gets harder
when we go out of the house. He can be very talkative but he doesn’t
like speaking to strangers. A lot of interactions are made
non-verbally. He’ll hide his face or stare at the floor. He makes a
thumbs up sign for thank you. He whispers things to me to tell other
people. He points or nudges or obliquely indicates things.

Waiting Room, by Robert Couse-Baker on Flickr. George wouldbe under the chairs by now, with his face against the flooror the wall.

Even worse are
medical appointments. I can’t get him to open his mouth to the
dentist and I’ve never dared making him an official appointment. He
spends most appointments hiding under chairs or screaming. At a
recent speech therapy appointment he spent the waiting period mostly
under chairs. He had to be manhandled into the room, where he stood
in the corner with his face to the wall shouting, ‘Stop talking,
mummy,’ until he switched to hiding behind some chairs.

He left that
appointment by rolling on his side out of the room, down the
corridor, and across the reception area.

There are a lot
of things to be grateful for about George. He is the most sweet and
loving child. He is creative and kind. He’s doesn’t seem
physically sensitive like Oscar, and he’s not particularly picky
over his food like Oscar is either (the list of things that Oscar
won’t eat because of taste or texture is very, very long, whereas
George will eat olives and couscous and houmous and drink
concentrated lemon juice, neat.) He is wonderful and imaginative and
generous. His smiles are like the sun coming out. He gives
spontaneous hugs and gifts of food or flowers. He is the kind of
child who can roll out of an appointment with complete aplomb, and I
think that’s the kind of thing to which we should all aspire.

Monday, 28 April 2014

I
have been thinking about imagination, and about how some doors of imagination are closed to me.
I’m a writer. Imagination is my thing. Metaphors, similes, creating
new worlds and people to go in them. But other people’s imagination
is another ball game (look, there’s a metaphor, and not even one I
really like.) I like this item of food, so why don’t you like it? I
believe in this political viewpoint, so why, even if I explain as
clearly as I can, won’t you agree with me? Why won’t you believe
what I know is the truth? Why doesn’t your mind think like mine? I
can try to see it as I would see it if I were you, but not as you
would see it without my involvement.

I
am a literature graduate and I love well written fiction with a
passion. But I find it very hard to imagine other writer’s worlds
in my head. This is a hard thing for a writer to admit to. When I
read a book I almost never see the faces of the characters. Even when
I write I can’t see the faces of my characters. People are harder
to visualise than surroundings, but with some writers surroundings
are almost impossible too. Jane Austen, I have found, is almost
impossible to visualise. When I read Emma many years ago I couldn’t
visualise Emma’s world. She was forever walking up and down a
street that was something like a film set with nothing behind the
fronts of the houses. Austen describes minds, not places.

I
can get lost in a well described environment. I remember reading The
Long Winter once and looking up astonished to find that there was
bright summer sunshine outside, not a blizzard. But still the
characters’ appearances are a mystery, no matter how well
described. Characters have hair and dresses and physical actions, but
they don’t have faces. A good film adaptation is a blessing,
because then I have something to fit in my mind to characters which
would otherwise be an amorphous grouping of described features,
something like a late Picasso painting. I might hear a description of
a nose, of eye colour, of high cheekbones, but these things are a
jumble in my mind.

Extend
this, and I find it very hard to keep a number of characters in my
head. All these names that don’t really have faces are jumbled
around in my mind as I read each page. I find it hard to remember
names and fit them to faces in the real world, so in a book where I
have never been presented with an actual physical image of that face
is nigh on impossible. Imagine the time when I was walking to the
school with my husband. He waved and greeted someone. I asked him in
a low voice who it was and he told me in a bemused voice that it was
the man who lived across the road from us. I recognise him in the
street outside his home, but I’ve never seen him on that path
before and so he was a stranger. I couldn’t tell you his name if I
tried. I’m having trouble recalling his wife’s name right now,
someone I speak to often on the school run. It’s something Welsh
and I know it isn’t Gwen. That’s it. The further people are away
from me in lifestyle, tastes, habits, the harder I find it to
remember their details. (Don’t get me started on remembering their
contact details. I still can’t even remember my own home phone
number.) So give me, say, sixteen people in a novel whose faces I
cannot see and names I struggle to remember, and I’m lost.

Of
course this lack of social imagination has an impact on my
interactions with the real world. Other people seem to be part of a
web of communication from which I am excluded. This has gone on all
my life and I feel it as soon as I’m in an arena where I need to
pick up those vital bits of information that people share with each
other. ‘Oh, you know Betty?’ someone says. I shake my head. ‘You
know, Sarah’s mother. Sarah’s in George’s class.’ I shake my
head again. I have no idea. These people mill around and if they have
particularly pleasant or unpleasant personalities their faces might
start to stand out. (I have to admit, I remember the faces of those
people I see as threats far better than those I see as friends.) If
they talk to me a lot I might start to remember their name and I know
the names of my children’s friends, but no further. There’s a
network of gossip, discussion, information sharing, whatever you want
to call it, but I always seem to be on the outside.

What
does all this mean? I don’t take people away with me in my head.
When I leave my children at school I am aware of their existence, of
course. I love them, and if there’s something specific that has
them upset I might worry about them, but essentially once I turn away
from the door I could be childless. I don’t look ahead to the
moment of picking them up. In that moment I could be childless for
the rest of my life. I don’t have a good memory for what happened
last week or a good concept of what might happen next week. Things
happen a day at a time. So I don’t live with the thought of other
people in my mind, not unless they’re making noise, poking me, in
some way invading the bubble of my mind. That, perhaps, is a lack of
social imagination. I have six or more novels under my belt, but I
can’t see the faces of any of my characters. I have read hundreds
of books, and the characters are a cannibal’s assortment of noses,
eyes, legs, and hair. This is how my mind works.

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

The last time I posted I spoke very briefly about being an
HSP mother. I promised to save that for next time. I've known that I was an HSP for a good many years, but recently my self assessment has changed. HSP stands for Highly Sensitive Person, and if you want to find out more about that then Dr Elaine Aron's site is the best place to go.

If the phrase 'Highly Sensitive Person' sounds like it should be surrounded by daisy chains and auras perhaps
it's because it often is. If I have to hear the words 'are you an
indigo child?' one more time I may scream. I'm not saying all HSPs are
like that, but you get an awful lot of it.

The perfect retreat - as long as they don't know I'm in there.

I am HSP. I have all of the
problems of being HSP. The overly sensitive skin, hearing, sight. The
intolerance for chaos and noise. The sensitivity to chemicals and insect
bites. Ant bites turn into huge red weals. The last time I was stung by a
bee I went into anaphylaxis. Then there's the social sensitivity. The
need to frequently withdraw from other people and be totally alone.
That's why I'm currently lying in a tent with a blanket over my head.
The screaming and bickering of three small children is enough, but it's
not just that that fills me up. It's the constant little nudges. The
questions, the touches, the inability to go anywhere alone. The constant kisses that make nausea rise in me. The constant
sensory stimulation is just too much. I start to feel as if my mind is
spinning and coming apart. I want to scream and hit them away. Of course
I don't. At least, I try to control it, although I can't promise not to
snap.

But recently I have grown to realise that it was more than that. It's not just being an HSP. It's actually Asperger's Syndrome.

My
problems in fitting in with other people go way back. I've always had
few friends or no real friends. I can't say 'I love you' to anyone but
children and animals - not without a great deep down questioning of what
love is and if I really feel it. I can't sit in a room and talk to a
person, even a close friend, without intense anxiety and self-reflection
and analysing every sentence. I can barely talk on the phone. I
constantly feel as if I'm missing social cues, misreading people's
reactions, coming in at the wrong point or failing to come in at all. I
go away from these interactions feeling drained and full of self-hatred
for my inability to connect, to just do what other people do, and sit
down and talk. I want to connect with people. I really do. It just
doesn't work out. It's especially hard when every new place and
situation sends me into a kind of shutdown, when visiting a place that I
haven't been to before leaves me with intense anxiety and moving house
makes me need to hide in bed for a week with physical weakness,
diarrhoea, and an inability to think straight.

Often I don't know who I am.

I think I've heard every stock response since my
self-diagnosis. 'You can't have Asperger's, you're too empathic.' 'I
knew someone with Asperger's and you're not a bit like her.' 'You're
just trying to explain your reaction to a difficult childhood.'
Conversely I've had a couple of supportive friends - one with Asperger's
herself who had suspected that I had it, another who is a learning
disabilities nurse who suspected the same, another who read through the
symptoms after her initial doubts and agreed, yes, that was me summed up
on paper. These friends are like a balm and make me feel less like I'm
losing my mind or being a hypochondriac. One of the problems with
Asperger's is a lack of a sense of identity. If I watch a film or read a
book or am exposed to a certain strong identity I take it on,
chameleon-like, and so I am left constantly questioning my motives and
from where my feelings have come. I worry that I am too empathic to have
Asperger's, but empathy in Asperger's is a hot potato all of its own.
There is a current line of thought, which seems upheld by most of the
aspies I have met, that people with Asperger's actually feel too
strongly, and so shut down and have difficulty in processing their
emotions. We grow attached to inanimate objects even more so than
bewildering human beings. This explains why I grieved for almost eight
years about moving home, sobbed when we got rid of our broken television
and settee, and still dearly miss the car we had when I was growing up.
It explains why when someone comes at me with a hug or a kiss I feel as
if I'm in the path of an oncoming train, and why I can't say, 'I love
you' without deeply analysing what it means to love. Love is too
important a thing to miscommunicate to someone who means the world to
you.

It's extremely difficult to pursue a diagnosis of
Asperger's if you're
female and on the NHS (at least in this part of the country, where they
just don't seem to have the resources.) Females with Asperger's syndrome
are exceptionally good at coping
mechanisms, it seems, at papering over the cracks and fitting in to a
neuro-typical society. My case has been summed up as 'everyone
finds life hard,' and dismissed because I'm a writer, capable, it seems,
of empathising with my characters and using metaphor. Language is my
'thing.' It's what I do well - written down, at least. Spoken, it's a
different matter. But all of the online tests agree. All of my contact
with other people with Asperger's agrees. My resonance with their
experience agrees. All the little seemingly unconnected things in my
life agree with the traits set out for females with Asperger's. Reading Tania Marshall's highly detailed list of female Asperger's symptoms is
like reading a biography.

Part of a series of earthenware figures I made as a teenager,exploring loneliness, empathy, and family relations.

But what does all this mean for me? It means that things that
aren't symmetrical make my brain itch and most of the time I wear no
more than a t-shirt because clothes drive me crazy. It means that
messages in my inbox go unanswered because the more important they are
the more anxious I am to get the reply exactly right. It means that I
don't see good friends for years because the thought of
meeting up with them and opening up social interaction is terrifying.
It means that I barely talk on the phone except to my family. It also
means that often I am shut off and unaware of other people's problems.
It means that when I am aware of them I am desperate to help them 'fix'
it and get back to the status quo. It means that sometimes I say things
that are too blunt or too focussed on solving the problem rather than
simple reassurance. (If I give you simple reassurance it's likely that
it's a learned habit. Coming from a family with deep mental problems I've had a lot of practice at that.) It means that I suffer from depression and anxiety
and the urge to self-harm in order to get some control over my life. It
means that I love my children dearly, but that I get touched out,
overwhelmed, in desperate need of alone-time.

Not my most organised shelves. I mostly just love the aesthetics of this.

It also means good things. Obsessions with television programmes and
characters that have immeasurably improved my life and brought me many
online friends. True it means that I spent a good portion of my teenage
years having meltdowns at equipment failure when watching Star Trek, and
that I have spent a lot of the past few years sobbing over the death of
Peter Graves and the fact that my favourite character left the tv show
Route 66, way back in the early sixties. But these obsessions bring me a
huge amount of joy. Writing fanfiction taught me to write novels.
Needing all of my dvds and cds to be ordered by alphabet and genre means
that I can find what I want when I want it. I don't lack things to keep
my mind occupied because I have to watch every episode of my current
obsession in order, or I have to read every single book on the latest
'have you read this?' list regardless of personal taste. I like to
answer questions and find out as much as I can about the world. I see
things at a different angle, and I feel that I see them better for that.

Having some kind of diagnosis, albeit a non-professional one, has
helped me to make sense of my life. It's made me feel like less of a
broken human being. When my sympathy span is short if my children have
hurt themselves I know it's not just because I'm a despicable human
being. When I need to get away from the touching and kissing it's not
because I'm cold. And when one of my sons has his own meltdowns over the
wrong trousers or being misunderstood or a hundred seemingly
insignificant things I can understand that it's probably because this
runs through the family (I can see it in various family members) and
he's not just being precious. He has real, valid fears and concerns. For
the first time in my life I have a connection with people who think and
feel like me and understand the issues that I face in life. The hardest
thing is being 'out' to people who don't believe that I'm right about
myself. The best thing is being 'out' to those who do.

Saturday, 15 February 2014

Things are always
different when we're at my parents' place. They live on a four acre
permaculture smallholding and for an HSP (that's a whole other blog
post waiting to happen) it's so much easier for me there. This
morning I felt capable of making playdough. It's been a long time.
I'm not sure if I've ever made it with my children, but I have great
memories of it as a child, the smell of it, the salty taste on my
hands, making all sorts of shapes and things with it. Since
three-year-old Ben's teacher had just recommended him playing with
playdough to strengthen his hands for writing it seemed like the
perfect time.

I wanted to find a
recipe that didn't include cream of tartar, because I was sure we
wouldn't have that in the house, and I don't remember it being in the
recipe as a child. Luckily I found one on the Cbeebies site that was
perfect.
A bit awkward that it was in cups (and surprising for a British site)
but we had some measuring cups in the drawer, so it was all good.
Once we'd mixed the salt, flour, and cornflour I split the mixture in
half and coloured half of it red and half blue.

The children had plenty
of fun helping me make the dough, and the fun continued once it was
kneaded into balls and out on the table. With the help of the cutters
I used as a child and various other kitchen bits and bobs they have
spent the morning making shapes, mountains, babies in cradles, graves
for their Lego men (that was George. He has an interesting mind),
pancakes and ice cream.

For an added bonus,
while I had the cornflour out, I decided to introduce them again to
non-Newtonian fluids, which flow when they're not under pressure but
go hard when force is applied. We've shown Oscar and George this
before, but I don't think they remembered. I mixed a bowl of
cornflour with a little water and put it on the table to show them
how it worked. Ben was a little freaked out at first, but Oscar and
George were fascinated and George spent at least three quarters of an
hour deeply engrossed in this single bowl of cornflour. Now Ben is
pretending it's Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings and is digging it
out onto the table.

We got a little science in with this, discovering
that these fluids work as they do because on the microscopic level
you have little grains of solid in a suspension in a liquid. When the
fluid moves slowly the particles can move past one another, but under
impact there's no time for the particles to move aside and make way,
and so they behave like a solid.

Of course as an HSP
parent I'm exhausted now and they're still going strong four or five hours later. There's
playdough everywhere. But they're having fun, and that's what counts.

About Me

Graduate of English Literature (BA, 1st Class) and of Early Mediaeval Studies (MA), mother to three children, frequent depressive, optimist, stuck in a teenage mindset, liable to become lovestruck, writer of novels (which are available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/coffeebeancamelathotmaildotcom )